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Maybe when we first heard about the possibility of a third Bill & Ted, it sounded like an outlandish idea. As Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves have continued to offer little updates, however — and as more and more ’80s and ’90s properties have found their way to the big screen — it’s started to seem more and more plausible. And now the project’s taken one more big step forward, with Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest) just hired to direct. More details after the jump.

A year ago, Keanu Reevessaid in an interview that he was “trying” to get a third Bill & Ted film made, and we weren’t sure if he was joking. In retrospect, I’m not sure why we were doubtful — it seems like every other popular film from the ’80s and ’90s is getting a reboot, remake, or sequel, so why not Bill & Ted? Over the past year, he and former co-star Alex Winter have mentioned Bill & Ted 3 in various interviews, and now some real progress has been made on the project: According to Winter, the script has now been completed. Read more after the jump.

Earlier this week I saw a bunch of people on my twitter stream retweeting a bit of interesting film trivia: That the 1996 Pauly Shore/Stephen Baldwin “comedy” Bio-Dome was originally scripted as Bill & Ted 3. I was surprised as I had never heard this before. A quick google search showed that the information wasn’t new, as it appears on hundreds of websites across the interwebs. The problem is that many of the webpages (which include some credible movie sites in the mix) provide the same minimal piece of info, and don’t expand upon the story. IMDB’s Trivia section (which, yes, is user submitted like wikipedia) has the largest explanation:

A third sequel was planned, but was canned after Keanu Reeves, and later, Alex Winter, declined to reprise their respective roles. The script, which had already been written, was instead modified slightly, re-casted, and recycled into Bio-Dome (1996).

It’s a cool bit of trivia, but does it even make any sense? Bio-dome takes place completely inside a scientifically created closed ecological system, and doesn’t venture from modern (1996) day at all. How could a script involving time travel be re-purposed for a self contained story like this? It smelled a little fishy to me so I decided to ask someone who might know… Alex Winter (the actor who played Bill S. Preston in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, and later went to star and direct in the cult classic Freaked). He’d likely know something about this right? Find out what he said after the jump.

The internet is abuzz that a new Bill & Ted movie might be in the works, but sadly the source of the speculation isn’t that substantial. On the red carpet for the Academy Awards, MTV asked Keanu Reeves if we’d be seeing a new Bill & Ted sequel in the future. Reeves laughed and responded by saying “I’m trying, I’m trying.”

MTV journo Josh Horowitz asked if he was joking, to which Reeves responded “I’m not…” Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves back together again? “We’ll See.” You can watch the clip from yourself embedded after the jump. It’s very hard to tell if Reeves is just trying to appease the MTV interviewer or is actually serious about his reply. Either way, I think another Excellent Adventure may be years and years off.